As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Sunday, 6 August 2017

Why are the roseate spoonbill and other Gulf Coast birds in Pennsylvania?

Updated on August 1, 2017 at
11:07 AMPosted on August 1, 2017 at 8:57 AM

Birds that normally spend their
summers along the southern coast of the U.S. and points farther south in the
Gulf of Mexico and South America are making almost unheard-of visits to
Pennsylvania this year.

A roseate spoonbill has been
drawing anxious birders to Conodoguinet Creek in Hampden Township, near Camp
Hill in Dauphin County for the past week or so. Reports of a roseate spoonbill
- likely the same bird - first emerged July 15 from the Conejohela Flats
section of the Susquehanna River, near Washington Borough in Lancaster County.

If the two sightings about 30
miles apart were the same bird, together they would represent only the fourth
time in nearly 150 years that a spoonbill has been documented in
Pennsylvania.

Lone spoonbills previously were
confirmed in the state in 1869, 1924 and 1968, according to Dan Brauning,
supervisor of the Pennsylvania Game Commission's Wildlife Diversity Program,
project director of the second Pennsylvania Breeding Bird Atlas project in
2004-08 and co-author of "The Birds of Pennsylvania," the definitive
book on birds in the state.

They are normally found along the
Gulf Coast in Florida and Texas, islands in the Gulf of Mexico and South
America.